Humpbacks Show Underwater Mourning

Video and a short published study document a humpback mother who remained with a stillborn calf on the seabed for hours, exhibiting prolonged attentive and caregiving behaviors beneath the surface rather than the commonly observed lifting behavior. The record is the first firm filmed instance for baleen whales and offers a measurable behavioural sequence for researchers to study maternal attachment in large cetaceans. — If humpbacks demonstrably show post‑mortem caregiving, it strengthens public and policy arguments about cetacean sentience, protections, and how human activity (shipping, entanglement, tourism) should be regulated around breeding grounds.